A Step By Step Affair
by ER-Trovia
Summary: Three times Ray missed Chicago, and one time he did something about it. Baton Rouge, S14, Ray/Neela.


**A Step-By-Step Affair**

_So screw becoming a doctor to pay the bills. You and I know that plan is scratched. I still can't think straight, not as long as they're in surgery, and why the fuck am I even taking this seriously? I'm still picturing that railing giving in, the look on her face when she fell._

_The weird thing's that I wasn't afraid. I should have been scared shitless, but there never was time, not before Nick was brought to the ER and Anspaugh started fixing Jess up. So I think it's good. I think I'm sticking with this. I think, I want the music, but I'm not quitting this._

"What's that?" his mother asked and Ray looked up to see her standing in the doorway, his face growing hard.

"Nothing," he said, curling the piece of paper into a ball without bothering to read the rest. "Letter Morris sent along with the stuff." The box with the stuff from his locker was sitting on his desk, the one that didn't have a chair because he came with his own chair-to-go nowadays, bumping into things on fucking wheels. The lie came easily; it wasn't the first he'd told and it certainly wouldn't be the last.

His mother's eyes flickered to the box, and he looked away in time to not see if the sight of his sneakers sitting on top teared her up again.

"That's very kind of him," she said, voice clogged, knowing damn well when it was time to retreat. The door shut quietly behind her.

"That's Morris for you," Ray muttered to himself, "Font of fucking altruism."

The irony didn't come through; he just sounded bitter even to himself.

He sat there for a moment, knowing there was no way he could retrieve the crumpled letter from the garbage bin where he had thrown it, sitting in a corner he couldn't reach with the chair.

Screw the career he'd thought he'd have. The times of running after crazy patients and climbing onto gurneys to do CPR were over. He'd written so to himself in the letter, he'd never _wanted_ to be a doctor in the first place and who gave a fucking damn.

He remembered sitting in the nurses' lounge between Neela and Abby and writing the letter, though, scared and exhilarated, wide-awake because a fucking _building had crashed down_ and for once in his life, he'd been in charge. People had survived because of him that night. He'd thought he'd belonged between those girls, the strangest feeling but good. It had been good. He was suddenly missing it - sharp pierce of pain through his chest because they were _there_ and he was _this_ and...

_Fuck it._

Heavily leaning on the desk, he buried his head in his hands, willing himself not to feel.

* * *

><p>It took the longest time before he even noticed that he hadn't had a hard-on in forever. He didn't have to be a doctor to know that the drugs had blown it out of his system for a while, and the physical trauma had done the rest.<p>

_Fuck the trauma._ He just went down to business - in his bed with a tissue, because jacking off in the bathroom, stumps dangling in his line of sight? _Not gonna happen._

It was a grim affair. _Don't think of Neela,_ he reminded himself. This one was to prove that all was still in working order, nothing else, and he gripped his cock too hard to get it _done._

He put Claudia Schiffer on his mind and Maggie Gyllenhaal, for some reason, legs reaching all the way down to the ground for the one and nice heavy breasts for the other and it _worked,_ neither of them were anything like-

_kissing in his van, cold lips, warm tongue, this time his hand is under her parka cupping her breasts and he reaches down and she gasps_

He came, hard, pain shooting through the stumps when the sutures rubbed against the mattress the wrong way, cock twitching so hard that it almost slipped out of his hand.

Fuck. He was breathing too hard. Fuck.

So that still worked. Great.

_Neela._

Whatever.

Fuck.

* * *

><p>The wheezing sound was almost drowned out by the chatter of the patrons, but so familiar that Ray sharply turned his head - a pang of <em>unhealthy,<em> of _ER_ at a place where it shouldn't exist. He'd been waiting in the line at Starbucks, grimly determined on crutches and prosthetics. Wheezing guy was chubby and old and choking on a cookie.

Chairs were screeching when people got up, talking frantically and the wife calling for help, people exchanging panicked looks while the guy's face turned darker shades of red. Some looked hesitant, but nobody seemed to know how to help.

Muttering a curse, Ray bullied a woman out of the way and fought his way over - a step-by-step affair.

"Don't panic, I'm a doctor!"

What a joke. One or two disbelieving eyes turned towards his shirt and the rest stared at his non-existant knees, the way he was fighting for balance. Ray ground his teeth, eyes on the choking guy on his chair.

"Up!" he impatiently ordered the guy who stood closest, "Get him up."

The Heimlich maneuver used to be a great party trick. Not so much anymore now. Once the guy was upright, swaying dangerously, Ray wrapped his arm around his waistline, then dropped the other crutch and held on to him as much as he pulled. One, two thorough jerks, and he felt the solar plexus underneath the fat relax. The guy greedily gasped - beautiful free airways again.

Ray let go when the man stumbled away, and barely had the time to take a breath of his own before he started swaying dangerously.

"Yo doc, I gotcha," a voice said and a hand grabbed his shoulder.

Other people picked up his crutches. Before he knew it, the wife was dividing her attention between him and the husband, promising her eternal gratitude and so on while the husband waved his hand between two gasps to do the same.

It was fucking surreal.

The nurses would have stood at the ready with a scathing quip about angels in white - they all could have done it themselves. Morris would have been there to steal some of the fame away and check out if there was an easily impressed woman around for a date. Kovac would have found a moment later on shift to remind him it was just his job, and not to let people's gratitude get to his head.

Neela would have materialized at his side to check if he was fine, still healing up and all.

Most of them would have, at that.

"Fuck!" Ray spat out once he was finally outside, humid autumn air hitting him square in the face. "Goddammit, _fuck!_" The few pedestrians turned to give the weirdo gimp a glance and hurry away as fast as their legs could carry them - which was a lot faster than Ray's.

* * *

><p><em>All I'm saying is, don't screw this up. You better be shaping up into a really good attending once you read the letter again. There aren't a lot of chances like this one in life for guys like you and me.<em>

_So, I guess here goes nothing-_

_Listen to Lewis sometimes. She's a pain, but she knows her way around and she's your boss.  
><em>_Stop rushing through charts.  
><em>_Pick a rotation that actually teaches you something.  
><em>_Try not to be sued for malpractice.  
><em>_Start cleaning the bathroom for real - remember it makes Neela smile.  
><em>_Remember it's time for a change._

* * *

><p>He sat on the bed with his phone in hand longer than could possibly be sane.<p>

_It's a bad idea,_ a voice in his head whispered at him, but he couldn't - he couldn't _not_...

"What the hell," he muttered and punched in the number he had fucking memorized. He'd had no _life_ back there.

The phone rang for what seemed like forever while he imagined folks rushing through the ER, chasing after incoming and trying to clean the board and ignoring the damn phone that wasn't their job to answer anyway and where the hell was...

"County General, this is the emergency room."

"Hey, Jerry."

His heart was beating too fast.

Leaning back until the back of his head bumped against the wall, Ray closed his eyes.

"Guess who's calling..."

Meanwhile, he waited for the knot in his chest to come lose.

It had to, one day.


End file.
